John McAfee found dead in Spanish prison hours after court allows extradition

McAfee was wanted for tax evasion in the US

John McAfee, the creator of McAfee antivirus software, was found dead in a Barcelona prison on Wednesday, hours after a Spanish court issued a preliminary ruling to extradite him to the United States to face tax evasion charges.

The provincial justice department said that prison medics and guards attempted to resuscitate McAfee, but were unsuccessful. The statement added that "everything indicates" that McAfee took his own life.

"This is the result of a cruel system that had no reason to keep this man in jail for so long," McAfee lawyer Javier Villalba told Reuters. He added that the software entrepreneur died by hanging as his detention for the past nine months had brought him to despair.

Prison authorities are investigating the incident.

McAfee, 75, was arrested in the Barcelona airport in October after being charged in Tennessee last year for tax evasion. He was also indicted in New York in a cryptocurrency fraud case.

When detained in Barcelona, McAfee was about to board a flight to Turkey with a British passport.

The US Justice Department alleged that McAfee failed to file tax returns for four years, despite earning millions between 2014 and 2018 from consulting work, speaking engagements, promoting cryptocurrencies, and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary.

The court was told that McAfee evaded tax liability by having his income paid into bank accounts in the names of nominees.

McAfee, who was born in Gloucestershire, England, lived a colourful life. He came to the limelight in 1980s after releasing McAfee VirusScan that currently has nearly 500 million users worldwide.

Before launching his commercial anti-virus software, McAfee had worked for NASA, Lockheed Martin and Xerox. He sold his software company to Intel in 2011.

McAfee said in 2019 that he had not paid taxes for eight years for ideological reasons.

He also ran for US president in 2016 as a Libertarian.

During a court hearing in May, McAfee said that he would spend the rest of his life in prison if he were to be convicted in the US. He told the court that the US authorities want to use him "as an example," and that the Spanish court should see "the injustice of this".

Image credit Gage Skidmore